The Trouble With Visiting Hoth

Sometimes you don’t even need to be all that sneaky in the work place to flaunt your geek. About a week and a half ago I was in Calgary, AB, Canada for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo with FlipOn.TV (which is magical, let me tell you.) While I was there it began to snow. Now, for many people this is neither surprising, nor of much concern. For me, this was terrible. I am from Seattle, raised in the greater Puget Sound area, and snow is not normal. We Seattlites are bred in a cool climate that doesn’t usually go above 80 or below 45. It rains in the morning, it’s sunny in the afternoon, and should we get more than an inch of that terrifying frozen whiteness known as snow, we shut down operations and hide in her homes glaring with distrust. This is why Alaskans hate us.

So, snow. It was snowing in Calgary and it was cold. I don’t deal well with cold. In fact being cold makes me whiney and I have zero cartilage in my hips so it makes them hurt. So what do you do at a convention when you are wearing a thin t-shirt and jeans and seriously contemplating attacking the dude in the tauntan costume so you can steal it for your own? You take a break and head for the merch booths! I spotted welovefine first and wanted the tauntaun hoodie (it has intestines patterned inside and a light saber for a zipper pull!) but their hoodies, as I was advised before the wonderful man started helping me, were designed for Asians. I am not built like an Asian girl. I am 5’7” with practically nonexistent hips, wide shoulders, and a lot of bust. I wanted that hoodie, though. So I started with the XL. It’s the right length, the hood is long enough (and has little horns <3), and it zips fine over the stomach and stops under the boobs. XXL got a bit higher, but sadly, still didn’t work. That was the highest they went to, sadly enough, as they were out of 3XL. Cue my sad face.

I wandered off, having decided I needed something Star Wars related as all I could do was imagine myself freezing to death in the middle of the Calgary Stampede, a glittery white statue that the 501st could put on display beside their Han frozen in carbonite statue. I was seriously comparing it to Hoth and the snow wasn’t even sticking. Does this make sense? To me, yes. To those like me, probably. To those who deal with three foot drifts 4+ months out of the year? I am apparently a crazy person.

Anyhow, I journeyed across the vast expanse in search of an awesome, warm, and not overly expensive sweat shirt that I would wear more than just once. I like Star Wars well enough, seen all the movies, read most of the books (which are no longer canon, thank you Disney for making this more difficult to keep in a single timeline) and have a serious crush on R2D2, however I am nowhere near as crazy over it as my mother. Halfway through my search I realized that should I get this Star Wars sweater, my mother was likely to borrow it. By borrow, I really mean she was going to abscond off with it and cackle every time I asked her if I could have it back. This is understandable, I totally did that with her Brodeur Away Jersey. Whatever, though, she totally doesn’t even like the Devil’s, she just like Goalies. I, however, am a true fan. So there.

So basically, my search changed half way through to finding, instead, something that called to me. Something I would wear often and without any kind of regret. I started thinking “what if I could wear it to work” and not just on Friday when we can basically wear anything we want, either. I wanted something I could input into my Sneaky Geeky work wardrobe. I ended back up at welovefine. Those that know me know that I wear a LOT of sweaters. I love them, especially boyfriend sweaters, because I think they look adorable with all the dresses I like to wear and they keep me warm when I am cold. I had remembered something that had caught my eye when I was trying on the tauntan hoodie and when I went back it was there and they did have the 3XL! So I tried it on and I swam in it. Down to the 2X, still huge. Down to the XL. Big, but in the good way that meant I could wear it like a boyfriend sweater, which made sense because it was a men’s sweater. It was simple, brick red with black accents, and when it’s open you don’t even realize that it’s a geeky cardigan.

And then you button it up, and Deadpool happens. Oh, yes. This is now my favorite item of clothing. Deadpool happens to be my favorite Marvel character and now he can come with me to work every day.

Geek Girls Are Not Fake - Don't Step On Other People's Fandoms!

Once upon a time, in the fair land of Geekdom, there was equality amongst the people. Girls and boys teamed together around maps, dice clutched in their hands as they waited to see if they could defeat the fell Lich in its lair. It was a glorious time where all those who were stuck on the outside found one another and a commonality that made the bitter light of a world that didn’t understand them somehow easier to bear. Their love of comics and table top games and video games brought them together and there was peace in the land. Well, a peace as relative as the next Atari battle would allow for.

 Then came the dawning of girls wanting equality in characters. They were tired of playing male characters and tired of the female characters they loved being treated as little more than an object of wet dreams. As there was nothing else, however, these were the girls that little girls had to love. And so they did. Their love blossomed into wishing they could be as strong and beautiful as these heroines and thus became cosplay.

How the hell does showing your appreciation of a character you love somehow equate to being a fake geek? This is a day and age where people are supposed to be smarter and more realistic. You know what, I DON’T read a lot of comics. I know a couple girls who do, though, and whatever I don’t know, they make up for it. You know what else I don’t do a lot of? Gaming. This doesn’t make me a fake geek, this means my nerdgasms happen elsewhere, thank you very much. My elsewhere happens to be movies and books. I don’t watch a lot of the youtube channels that are devoted to these sorts of things, don’t troll through Tumblr or Reddit, this doesn’t make me less of anything. It means my interests might not align with yours.

How dare you compare yourself to anyone that loves something so unconditionally? A real geek understands what it is like to be treated differently for loving something that people might not understand. A real geek keeps an open mind when they learn something new. A real geek doesn’t tell someone they have somehow failed because of a single obscure fact that happened, four thousand issues ago. A real geek, would also know that Lois was NOT created as the love interest of Superman, thank you very much. Get with your comic book history, that’s not even obscure, that’s downright main stream and should be standard knowledge.

I am not a fake geek girl. I am a geek who happens to be a girl. I am not less because I have an awesome rack, you are not less because you don’t have an awesome rack. We are geeks and geeks are cool, so get with the program, let our race prosper once more, and get over whatever damage some pretty girl in hipster glasses did to your ego that makes you fear us for having ovaries. Geeks are legion and we should be united under an awesome banner wielded by Joss Whedon himself, not arguing on two sides of a stupid divide over whether or not you really count as a geek if you have breasts.

Man up, get over it, and come join me on the bright side; We have star trek shot glasses and whiskey.

Stevie